Paul Grahm has published a must-read essay on What Businesses Can Learn from Open-Source. His observations are succinct, self-evident, and refreshingly open to the future that large corporations are so despretly trying not to acknowledge. Forgive me for the grandiose tone, but the rise of Open-Source is inextricably interwined with the highly disruptive rise of the network, as a new major form of social organization. It is not an exaggeration to say that the network will change the world as much as the free market.

Some proof of the bold claim I just made can be found in Iraq out of all places. In Iraq what we are really witnessing is a clash between an insurgency organized along the lines of a SPIN network (Segmented, Polycentric, Ideologically bound Network -- a very powerful and insidious foe) VS. the heirarchial US military (like Goliath, large, powerful, but very slow and clumsy) with virtually unlimited financial resources. Strangely, Microsoft is learning the exact same lessons as the US military in the realities of this emerging age of the network.

"There’s no nice way to say this: The world’s richest countries are deliberately, and as a matter of policy, promoting poverty and starvation in the world’s poorest countries."

The Hunger Barrier

LiveScience gives Dr. Evil (and all of those little and precious Dr. Evils to be) the top 10 ways to destroy the Earth. In #4, with tounges firmly in their cheeks, they suggest:

Basically, what we're going to do here is dig up the Earth, a big chunk at a time, and boost the whole lot of it into orbit.

...If we wanted to and were willing to devote resources to it, we could start this process RIGHT NOW. Indeed, what with all the gunk left in orbit, on the Moon and heading out into space, we already have done.

In a later section that discusses timeframes, they do admit that this plan has a downside:

Earliest feasible completion date: Ah. Yes. At a billion tons of mass driven out of the Earth's gravity well per second: 189,000,000 years.

I greatly admire their honesty.

The Chief Blogging Officer at High Beam Research brought forward some very disturbing news: A serious outbreak of Marburg Fever is occurring in Angola. What is Marburg Fever? To begin, like Small Pox, Ebola, Hanta and Lassa, its classified as a level 4 biohazard; in otherwords, Marburg is as dangerous as viruses and bacteria come. Its one of two flavors of filoviruses; the other flavor being Ebola. Its extremely deadly; take this chilling statistic from the last WHO update from Angola: "As of 14 April, 224 cases have been reported. Of these cases, 207 were fatal."

However, Marburg is not merely fatal... In all of my knowledge, I cannot think of one infectious disease which is more brutal, hideous, and utterly unimaginable as Marburg hemorrhagic fever... I'm not shitting you when I say that I'd rather get Ebola. So what happens when you contract Marburg? According to the CDC's FAQ for the "General Public", Marburg is a lot like the flu, only rarer, deadlier, and includes a rash, jaundice, and "multi-organ dysfunction". Apparently, they used that phrase "multi-organ dysfunction" to describe about 3/4ths of Marburg's symptoms.

Some of you may wish to know the disturbing truth about Marburg Virus. For you, I transcribed and translated the medical terms from a WHO article The Surveillence of Marburg/Ebola Fevers, by Dr. D. I. H. Simpson.

I must warn the reader before they choose to go further that this description of Marburg is very specific, cold, disturbing, graphic, but above all honest.Consider yourself forewarned.

The Symptoms and Progression of Marburg Hemorrhagic Fever

Note: Unlike the original article, this article is not intended for health professionals. For the sake of comprehensibility, I have removed all of the medical terms, and replaced them with standard english. Such changes are denoted by a "*".

How could anyone say "no" to that smile? Well, apparently the capitalist pigs at the Czech Foreign Ministry can... The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (who are mere parlor-pinkos, might I add) give us the full scoop:

See? That's all that he asks. But the imperialist lackeys in the Czech Republic continue to insist that they don't "ban films" in a Democratic society. I wonder if the Czechs might consider the fact that they might make Kim Jong-il cry. (Link Via Rebecca MacKinnon)

 The 10 Most Underreported Humanitarian Crises of 2004

Via American Samizdat

I was browsing through WavesofDestruction, when I stumbled upon a few videos of the tsunami which weren't all "cheese and crackers".

This video, shot by German tourist, captured the Tsunami hitting Khao Lak. The it gives an unusally extended look at the tsunami coming in from a distance. I found it interesting how long it took for the people on the beach to understand that something was wrong. I hope the people on the float got back to shore before the Tsunami hit.

This video is captured by a tourist in Phuket-Thailand. The camera man gets a clear shot of the big wave hitting his hotel. And of course, 2 seconds later he turns around and runs into the wall behind him out of fear. (I imagine that would have been my reaction as well).

This video shows the Tsunami behaving more like a flash flood than a wave. The camera man is lucky to be alive. I couldn't believe how long he stood there -- just watching the millions of gallons of water roll in before he realized he should maybe run.

Video from Malaysia. I think I counted all of the kids as making it safety after the wave hit... and our brave camera operator sure didn't seem too concerned. (Wouldn't want to get the expensive camera wet... sorry just pointing it out, that's all. I call it like I see it. "I'm a blogger with unfiltered views".) And for christ's sake, don't try to stop a floating car from moving! Don't these people have neurotic mothers who teach them to know better?

A BBC video of the tsunami hitting Aceh Indonesia, just 80 miles from the center of the earthquake. Link to video.

My new friend Suhit, the tech guru of the SEAEAT bloggers, wrote a wonderful post about what the Tsunami taught him. I suggest everyone read it for themselves. But in particular, he highlighted a post by Atanu Dey, which I've excerpted below:

It is a great tragedy. So many lives needlessly wasted. So many children dead, so many more with little hope of a decent human existence. Millions homeless without proper water, food, healthcare and education. Entirely preventable because we have the technology and the resources to avoid all this suffering and death. In the end it comes down to human frailty--greed, short-sightedness, ignorance, the lust for power....

Yesterday 55,000 children died premature deaths, a few hundred million people didn’t have adequate housing, hundreds of millions were hungry. About half of all children in South Asia are malnourished. Poverty, a clear cause of malnourishment, is a also a consequence. It is a Silent Emergency.

“Every single day – 365 days a year – an attack against children occurs that is 10 times greater than the death toll from the World Trade Center,” says Jean-Pierre Habicht, professor of epidemiology and nutritional sciences at Cornell. “We know how to prevent these deaths – we have the biological knowledge and tools to stop this public health travesty, but we’re not yet doing it.” [Source]

Malaria kills in 1 year what AIDS killed in 15 years. In 15 years, if 5 million have died of AIDS, 50 million have died of malaria. [http://www.malariasite.com/malaria/WhatIsMalaria.htm]

Yet our seas, rivers and even rainfall are under siege from pollution, waste and man-made destruction…..claiming the life of one child every 15 seconds [Source]

Over five million children per year die from illnesses and other conditions caused by the environments in which they live, learn and play. Around two million children under five die every year from acute respiratory infections, the largest killer of young children. [Source]

Almost two thirds of the child deaths each year are accounted for by just five specific causes - diarrhoea, acute respiratory infections, measles, malaria and perinatal. The great majority of these deaths could now be prevented at very low cost. [Source]

So will this outpouring of sympathy and world unity disappear as soon as the images of the Tsunami disappear from our television screens? I hope not, and I hope a few of you will join us in continuing this sudden community that has arisen from the deaths of over one hundred thousand people. Does the worth of a human life disappear if you don't see it? If we look at our collective actions -- as a planetary society -- it would seem that is our belief. So let's do our best to destroy that belief.